Washington University Books

The innovation of railroads in the early nineteenth century transformed America from a nation covering the eastern seaboard to the country it is today spanning from Maine to Southern California. "The West The Railroads Made" is an anthology of stories, illustrations, and photographs (some of which are color) to tell the tale of how the pioneers of this technology were essential in transforming America in the country it is today. "The West The Railroads Made" is highly recommended for locomotion enthusiasts everywhere, and for any community library collection for Railroads or American history.

More than any other single factor, railroads made the West the way it was and is in many respects today. The Federal government undeniably had a major role too. But the Louisiana Purchase, offers of free land, troops for security, and such, were government measures related mostly to setting the stage. It was the railroads which accounted for the details of Western development; details which caused settlers to lead their lives in certain ways and make decisions about which opportunities to pursue. Thus did the railroads play an incomparable role in how the West was developed. "The railroad was foreground, everything else was background," is the way the authors put it.

The co-authors steeped in Western history with academic and professional backgrounds go into all aspects of the railroad's effects. Railroad lines not only determined the location of towns, but also the layout of them. In their earliest stages, roads in Western towns were oriented toward the railroad depot. Furthermore, the railroad depot was the first experience settlers and immigrants had of a town; and as a place for the receiving and shipping of goods, a town's economy and in some cases its existence depended on the depot.

Railroads adapted as they changed the West by their presence. The original few early lines tied all parts of the West together internally and with the cities and states of the eastern parts. The value of land, the farms growing corn and wheat in such quantities that it affected the diet of all Americans, mountains of ore for Midwestern and Northern factories, and transport of large numbers of persons for rapid growth in many inviting areas were all major economic and sociological developments directly related to the railroads. As the West became more developed and their original roles faded, the railroads adapted by promoting tourism based on the natural wonders of the West and travel to major cities and other vacation areas.

The work is based on innumerable facts colorfully related; which facts were taken from the authors' scholarly knowledge and interest in Western history. Another part of the book's popular style are the hundreds of illustrations enhancing the text. A map of one early Western town, for instance, demonstrates the town's streets leading in straight lines from the railroad depot so people and goods can move easily to and from this hub. Color travel posters complement text on the different railroad lines' playing up the West as a tourist destination. Railroad documents, prints, and photographs are other sorts of illustrated materials. The assorted visual matter is so bountiful it spills over into the back matter of notes, bibliography, and index.

This is a fantastic book about Huskies football history. I am a big husky fan and I learned a ton about former players from Greg's book. It gave a lot of really neat insight into their opinions of the program and their personal experiences. This is a MUST READ for any Washington Huskies fan! Thanks for writing a great book, Greg !!!

If you are a bonafide Husky football fan, you must read this book. Tells the players inner thoughts and what motivated them. His players are unanimous in describing Coach Don James as a man of integrity, loyalty and are proud to be part of his legacy.
K. Wong, M.D.

This book is a great read. The topic is fascinating (to me, at least). Some of the material is a bit intricate, but the author does a great job of explaining it. He liberally uses footnotes to explain details which to an economist might be pedestrian but to a lay person such as myself are not obvious. (One ongoing topic is the exchange rate between pounds sterling and dollars, and how that relates to the price of gold and the cost of shipping gold between the UK and the US. He does a great job of walking the reader through the process and the arithmetic.) I highly recommend this book, and particularly recommend it to anyone who wonders what the Federal Reserve Board really does.

In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day, a blue-blood guest unmercifully grills James Stevens, the head butler at an English estate. The pompous guest is trying to demonstrate that uneducated people should not have the vote. "My good man," he asks, "do you suppose the debt situation regarding America is a significant factor in the present low levels of trade? Or...is the abandonment of the gold standard...at the root of the matter?" Stevens, aware that the question is meant only to baffle him, replies that he has no idea. Poor Stevens! Anyone without a degree in international finance would have an equally difficult time answering such an abstruse question. That's why this intriguing business history book by William L. Silber is so worthwhile: He brings global finance to life by spotlighting America's 1914 money crisis and by explaining how then-U.S. Treasury Secretary William McAdoo used this portentous episode to establish the nation's financial supremacy. We suggest you read this illuminating work of economic history to understand the seminal events that established U.S. monetary policy.

Politics haven't changed much in the thousands of years it has existed. "The Wicked Wine of Democracy" is the memoir of Joe Miller, a man who acted as a media relations professional for the Democratic party for much of the twentieth century. A simple explanation on his belief on how politicians get elected, and how to put the correct spin on the man you're fighting for, and the wrong spin on the man you're fighting against, "The Wicked Wine of Democracy" is intriguing, entertaining, and educational, despite its shady undertone. "The Wicked Wine of Democracy" is an insider's look at a darker side of politics, recommended reading for those who don't think American democracy is as pure as it can be.

Truth in labeling: The author, Joe Miller, is an old friend of mine. But enough older that many of the major Washington political players he worked with were only famous names to me. His insights -- anecdotal and at times painfully honest (he does not spare himself or anyone else as far as I can tell)-- are told with verve and with frequent high humor.

This is a book for anyone who is fascinated with politics, especially of the mid-20th century. Joe was one of those guys you see just a small part of standing behind some famous Senator or Governor of those years. But likely as not, Joe had written the words the Great Man was going to say.

The fact is that a lot of what Joe did as both a campaign manager and a lobbyist are illegal today. But they were "the way things were done" in the 40s, 50s, 60s and somewhat into the 70s. The good government people will cluck their tongues, but you can't change history. You can only learn about it and this book will not only teach you a lot, it will make you enjoy learning it.

Joe has always been a name dropper. I admit to many years of taking all that with a grain of salt. Now I know it was all true. Here's a example.

Forgotten by many now, but a major figure in California and national Democratic politics for years, was a man named Jesse Unruh. It was Unruh who spoke the true if crass words, "Money is the mother's milk of politics."

Having a martini with Joe as the book came out I said, "Where did you get that fabulous title?".

Joe said:
"Well I was talking to Jesse Unruh one day when he quoted himself, saying 'Money was the mother's milk of politics.' I murmured in response, "Ah, the wicked wine of democracy."

You should have a drink with Joe sometime. It is enlightening and a lot of fun. If you can't do that, read this book.

Stacey has many talents of the great game of life and believe it or not, they are almost all useful to the Californian Mountainman. His book is very funny it is very hard to put it down when nature calls.

Gebhards writes of his experiences in lucid prose expressing his love for the wilderness with philosopical insights punctuated with humerous anecdotes. He traces his enchantment with the "Wild Thing" from his boyhood in the Mississippi bottom lands to the formalization of his education at Utah State University to his employment as an Idaho fishery biologist, mule skinner, folk musician, reluctant politician, winter survivalist, camp cook, wilderness meteorologist and wild river runner. His tales are loaded with humor sometimes wry and other times raucous. A modern mountain man, Gebhards' love of the Rocky Mountain wilderness is unrelenting as it is passed on to the reader.

A Review in the December issue of the Norwegian-American newspaper, Døtre av Norge, a publication of the Daughters of Norway..

Let me begin by saying that Katherine Larson is a member of Nina Grieg Lodge #40 of the Daughters of Norway in Poulsbo, Washington.

Katherine worked with the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle and the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa, to develop a major exhibit on woven coverlets from major museums in Norway and the United States that was or will be shown as follows:

* Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, Washington, September 13-November 11, 2001;
* The Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota, May 16-July 14, 2002;
* West Vancouver Museum and Archives, West Vancouver, British Columbia, August-October, 2002.

The first forty pages of Katherine Larson's book are a cultural history of Norway using weaving and coverlets as a unifying theme. Katherine writes extensively and well about the isolation and self sufficiency of rural life in Norway. Although the precise dates that many techniques and technologies arrived in Norway from abroad are not typically known, she does try to frame such introductions in terms of centuries. More importantly, she discusses why weaving was so important to the development of the culture.

My favorite chapter in the first section of the book is titled, "More Than Just a Cover for the Bed," in which she describes the arrangement of farm households, the psychological boost from colorful additions during the long winter months and the cradle to grave use of coverlets, including baptisms and funerals.

Katherine uses historical photographs of women and their equipment; color prints from paintings in the National Gallery and line art of plants used for dying wool, of weaving techniques and of weaving patterns. She presents about 130 high-quality color photographs of finished coverlets, either flat so you can see the entire design or a close up section or in use on a bed. In addition there are many, many black and white photographs of more whole coverlets. Some of the detail drawings would also be useful for embroidery and knitting.

The later chapters of the book are devoted one each to the various types of Norwegian woven coverlets. Some of these are pan-Scandinavian and others even pan-European, but the essence always comes back to what Norwegian women had, wanted to have and were willing to create for their homes from roughly the middle ages to modern times.

Each valley or district in the country had a favorite technique and pattern for its coverlets, providing a rich visual texture to the book. The weaving styles and techniques covered include tapestry/billedvev, square-weave/rutevev, bound-weave/krokbragd, other weft-faced styles, knotted pile/rye, (reversible) double-weave/dobeltvev, and overshot/tavlebragd or skillbragd.

The appendices and closing words include a brief afterword about her family's immigration experience, a conversational and a literal table of equivalent of weaving terms among English, Norwegian and Swedish; notes; a glossary of textile terms in English; a bibliography; and a proper index.

This book is NOT a beginner's how-to. It is a highly readable cultural reference book about weaving. It would be a useful addition for anyone making hand-woven textiles, anyone who likes to apply older techniques in modern textile settings (not just weaving), and anyone interested in the cultural history of Norway and for Norwegian-Americans. In short almost everyone interested in Norway.

I was pleased to find my own family's two dominant weaving styles in the later chapters of the book: Danish weave, common in southeastern Norway, and overshot weave, mostly the Monk's Belt pattern. One of my maiden great, great aunts was a professional weaver and both my grandmother and aunt also wove.

there are many publications about american coverlets, this one attracted me because it concerns coverlets from another weaving tradition.

another reviewer has done a first rate job of detailing many of the books historical strengths. i am adding my review to include the patterns and designs.

this is not, as the other reviewer noted, an instruction manual. but it is a superb design resource, for many other fiber arts as well as weaving.

the photos are fantastic. the examples are inspiring--i'm mentally designing a color pattern sweater from one coverlet, and several beaded pr jects from others. some coverlet designs would translate very easily into several kinds of embroidery.

the author notes the similarities in design among scandanavian, russion, other european and mid-eastern weavings. what i found interesting is the similarities between some of the coverlets and american patchwork quilts. all crafts borrowed freely from one another--lace patterns were made into embroidery, and vice versa, weaving patterns were used in knitting, etc., so finding simialr elements is common. but the designs of several coverlets in this selection could pass for patchwork in their arrangement. since morwegian settlers are credited wtih introding the log cabin to american in the colonial era, i wonder is they also influenced the design of 18th and 19th century quilts.

this is a wonderful book, that would be of use and interest to norwegians and non-norwegians, anyone who designs for any textile craft, and the general reader who is interested in how our forbears lived.

i can only hope that another edition will be brought out.

This is an informative (and nicely written) look at 19th century American literature in terms of the ways it understands the ideas of deafness and hearing. The theoretical matrix of DuBois's color line may be less necessary and less useful here than the social historicist theory Krentz is developing as a base for reading both deaf and non-deaf authors in their negotiations of the imaginative--and perhaps the real--space of deafness. May be engaging to anyone appreciating American literature and/or interested in concepts of deafness, as well as to academics in these and related fields.

This is an original and provocative book. Addressing W. E. B. DuBois's concept of "the color line" in the 20th century, Krentz argues that 19th century American literature grappled with a "hearing line," i.e. a contested boundary between hearingness (the author's coinage) and deafness. He examines how this hearing line appears in work by deaf authors and also in the canonical authors of the century. The readings of Melville, Twain, Cooper, and others open new perspectives on their works that should be of interest to anyone concerned with the construction of American identity. The deaf authors included are contextualized in their literary and social locations as they articulate a deaf "I" or "we."

Throughout the work, Krentz engages current literary theory on gender, race, class, and colonialism. Deaf American culture intersects with these theories, but also presents challenges to them. The similarities and differences between deaf experience(s) and those of other oppressed groups deserve serious thought by anyone interested in the dynamics of self-definition for oppressed groups. Krentz emphasizes the positive sense of deaf identity and community that emerged in the 19th century, as authors responded to the complexities of American identity at that time.

Even though Sau-ling Cynthia Wong notes that "no other Asian-American writer since has been able to match Mori's community portraits for mellowness," his portraits of Japanese-American life just before World War II show the strain of a double identity at that time. (Even the title itself serves to illustrate the cultural binary.) Mori's prose is sparse, yet it is not cold. In all of the characters, from Sessue Matoi, the philosopher who "must be drunk and sober at the same time," to "the woman who makes swell donuts," there is a warmth and humanity throughout every story, even while the hints of the coming war begin to appear

This book was suppose to come out in print in 1941, but due to the attack on Pearl Harbor and anti-Japanese propaganda, it postponed its release until 1949. Toshio Mori is a master of storytelling. These collections of short stories should be with such classics as Hemingway and Saroyan. Yokohoma, California is both heart-felt and humorous. It is one of the best books on the Asian American experience.

This book was fascinating! I couldn't put it down. As a long time Seattle resident I have visited this shop on the waterfront many times. It was really intersting to read all the history and stories about this place over the years. It brought back memories of going there when I was young.

This is a compendium of data on plants from the boreal forest which are used for food, or medicine, or in a variety of ways for handicrafts (in the ample sense of the word). It fills a growing need for ethnobotanic scripture, when much knowledge is being lost because it is «old-fashioned». The data are presented in an easy-to-use format of one species per page (more-or-less), and cover the three aspects of use already mentioned, as well as the known names in Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Latin, Ojibwe, and Slave. Anything known about chemical properties is also included. This is truly an in-depth compilation, and shows us that there is more in the forest than moss and spruce trees (and unsuspected uses even for these).